China - Hunan Child trafficking case

Placements for International Adoption soared between 2001 and 2005, for both the "Hunan 6" and the 3 additional implicated orphanages, then dropped after the ring was stopped. (Statistics from Research China). The Hunan 6 are:

In the Hunan province of China a ring of child traffickers was arrested late 2005 - early 2006. Children were bought in Guangdong province and sold to orphanages in Hunan province. Eventually, ten people were convicted.

The court heard that the convicted human traffickers bought infants from Wuchuan and Zhanjiang of South China's Guangdong Province and sold them to social welfare homes in Hengyang, Hunan at the price of 3,200-4,300 yuan (400 to 538 dollars) each.

The social welfare homes knowingly bought the abducted children and forged orphan certificates for them, enabling foreigners and Chinese people, who made considerable donations, to adopt them.

The child-trafficking case was discovered by local police when an orphanage director was buying three baby girls from human traffickers at the crowded Hengyang railway station on November 17,2005.